Grit Lab Report

Hi Vishal,

Welcome to your personalized Grit Lab Report!

We will go week by week, reviewing everything you have told us through Poll Everywhere.

We hope this will help you reflect on what you have learned and experienced during Grit Lab.

Important note!

Sometimes, you may not have been able to respond to all polls.

If the data for one of the polls is missing, the automatic report will display NA, or ““.

Okay, let’s get started!

The first half of Grit Lab delves deep intp the passion facet of Grit.

We like to call it Choose Easy, because we think gritty people pursue what they enjoy.

Putting it graphically, gritty people tend to pursue the intersection of these four circles.

The first time we met, you told us where you were on the grit rubric.

Regarding passion you picked Stage 2: I have 2 or 3 emerging interests but am unsure how to figure out which one to pursue .

Regarding perseverance you picked .

As you know, grit grows, so don’t worry if you are not yet where you’d like to be in your grit journey.

Hopefully, this class will help you become grittier each day.

In week 2, we looked at your interests.

Interest is an emotion, and it is the opposite of boredom.

Your interests are the activities or subjects that spontaneously grab your attention.

Trying things out and seeing how you feel is the best way to refine your interests.

In week 3, we studied values, your beliefs about what is important.

You said your top three values were self-direction, benevolence, and stimulation.

You wrote a “This I Believe” essay, and here’s where you located it on Schwartz’s value taxonomy.

When we talked about strengths in week 4, you said your personality strength was conscientiousness.

You said your top three talents were artistic / spatial, social, and verbal.

We then talked about goal hierarchies.

You said you had a general intuition (but nothing specific yet) about your top-level goal.

We discussed self-concordance, or how much a goal aligns to your deeply held values and beliefs.

A goal you said you will be pursuing for the next six months is to drink more water .

Here is how self-concordant that goal was:

Don’t worry if your self-concordance for that particular goal is low.

It might mean that you need to reframe that goal in a way that makes it more relevant to your deep self, or change it!

Remember that self-concordance is goal specific, so other goals might be more self-concordant.

We then transitioned to the second part of Grit Lab:

Work Smart

In week 6, we looked at goal setting and planning.

You WOOPed!

For your Wish, what you wanted to accomplish, you said Get my flu shot .

For your Outcome, what would happen if your wish came true, you said Vaccinated .

For you Obstacle, what it is within you that stands in your way, you said Busy schedule .

For your Plan, you created this when-then plan to achieve your goal: When the flu drive opens, I will get vaccinated .

Whether you changed your WOOP or stuck to that one, here’s where it landed between being a total fail, and going exactly according to plan.

And here’s how much you learned

These goals are hard, and despite our best efforts, our plans can fail.

The important thing is that you learn something along the way!

In week 7, we talked about deliberate practice.

You shared you’ve done daily practice in Sports .

We learned that deliberate practice requires a challenging, hyperspecific goal, maximum concentration, instant feedback, and is often done alone.

In week 8, we discussed feedback.

Even though feedback can be hard to take, it is often the key to improve. So if you want to improve, seek it actively!

You said you felt Interested when receiving critical feedback, and Interested when receiving positive feedback.

We then turned to learning about stress.

In week 9, you reported feeling a little of stress in your life right now, the primary source of it being midterms .

We also talked about adversity and failure.

Although related, adversity and failure are different:

Adversity happens to us, whereas failure is something for which we are generally more responsible.

However, how we interpret stress and failure matters…

Interestingly, research has found that people who believe that stress can facilitate learning and growth experience enhanced performance, well-being, and health.

And failure—not achieving a particular goal—can be interpreted as “I’m learning!” and lead you to look for the lesson in that experience.

We closed the Work Smart section of the class by talking about habits.

Throughout the semester, you practice habit building using your Build-A-Habit Guide book.

You describe the habit you chose as Health .

Whether you were successful in habit building or not, this is how much you learned.

Finally, what good is grit if we do not dream for others?

So, we transitioned to Paying it Forward.

In week 10, we looked at mentors: role models that take an active role in your growth.

Hopefully, your mentor was authoritative, being both supportive and demanding.

Here’s how you described them:

You also wrote a gratitude letter to Teacher or professor .

In one word, you said it made you feel Happy .

One way of paying it forward is having a prosocial, beyond-the-self purpose. Here’s how you responded to items assessing that.

… and so quickly we arrived at the end of the semester.

Here’s how your mood varied over these weeks.

Do you notice any patterns? Is there anything that correlates with your mood?

Here you can scroll through all the quotes you wrote to summarize each class.

Both grit and talent are malleable.
Interest is an emotion, so is boredom.
Values are relatively stable but do show some change across time.
Goal hierarchies enable harmony and reduce conflict
Goals help bridge the intention-action gap
Flow occurs when skill and challenge are high
biggest obstacle to successful feedback and mentorship is your ego
How you respond to stress is very important, as it can determine your success
Simply willing yourself to do something is not effective.
Mentors are good for motivation and information
There are different circumstances where we are givers, takers, and matchers.

In the final class, we looked back to everything we’ve learned together and to how our passion and perseverance evolved during this class.

Here are the comments from your Grit Lab Teammates:

Gabriella Gibson
Vishal is incredibly thoughtful, intelligent, and kind. He asks really insightful questions in our group check ins, and throughout the semester I tried to not fill any awkward silences in the group just so I could see what questions he would ask. Vishal’s interest and dedication to pursuing a career in government or politics is also fascinating, and it’s been refreshing to be able to talk with him throughout the semester about his experience working in the government and hear about why he thinks politics is an effective means of change. I have on occasion considered politics as a career path, and my conversations with Vishal throughout the semester have renewed this interest - and I fully intend to read the articles he send as soon as finals season wraps up. Something else I appreciate about Vishal is that he always keeps it real - if there was a week that his habit wasn’t going as well as he would have liked, or if he didn’t make any origami one week, he was honest with the team and modeled lighthearted vulnerability. It was truly great getting to know Vishal throughout the semester, and I hope we can remain friends. Vishal’s Discovery Project presentation was really interesting - as a team, we had seen some of the smaller works (like the frog and the bird), but to see the modular cube and the star actually come together was exciting. I also didn’t know that he looked into origami internships, so the fact that he spent time researching career paths for this field was really cool. I also liked that his personality snuck into his presenting style - like making references to our team (validly) calling him a luddite, and accusing his friend of stealing the origami idea. These lighthearted jokes made the presentation more interesting as a listener, and I felt like the audience got to know both about his origami but also a bit about his personality. Overall, I was really impressed by his project, and I may even try some light origami as a result.
Philip Pan
I had a wonderful time getting to know Vishal this semester. Vishal is a principled, motivated, and compassionate individual, and I admire his discipline tremendously. Based on his willingness to commit to going to the gym at 6 AM every morning for his implementation intention pre-class activity, it is evident that Vishal approaches his objectives with consistency and intentionality. Vishal is also deeply curious about the world. In our group discussions, Vishal always found ways to relate different concepts to each other, and I enjoyed listening to his perspectives on topics ranging from professional careers to origami. It has been a pleasure getting to know Vishal, and I wish him all the best going forward. Vishal truly went above and beyond with his discovery project, completing 10+ activities on the checklist. I appreciate how Vishal integrated both a theoretical and practical analysis of origami into his presentation. In just five minutes, I felt as if I had gained a portion of Vishal’s mastery of origami via countless hours of practice this semester. One of my favorite takeaways from Vishal’s presentation was the distinction between the action, modular, and pureland styles of origami, concepts with which I had not previously been familiar despite a cursory understanding of the field. Vishal’s origami products from this semester were incredibly impressive, and I am excited to see his constructions in the future.
Stanley Liu
Vishal is a very optimistic person and was a bright spot in our group throughout the semester. His unwavering optimism serves as a constant source of inspiration, fostering a vibrant and uplifting atmosphere within the team. Vishal approaches all challenges with a positive mindset. He is incredibly hardworking as so evidently displayed by his tenacity to have curious conversations with politicians or tirelessly spend hours pursuing a passion for building origami. He also has a genuine concern for the well-being of others and is a very approachable friend. Vishal was a delight to work with throughout the semester.

We hope you have emerged from Grit Lab a little grittier than you started.

Do you want to see how your grit rubric changed?

Drumroll please…

Don’t worry if the rubric doesn’t yet reflect growth. It is only a coarse measure that cannot replace your own self-reflection.

In any case, grit is not built in a day…

…remember that progress is never smooth…

…so stay passionate and persevering in the lifelong quest of choosing easy, working smart, and paying it forward.

With grit and gratitude,

Angela and the Grit Lab team.